Have you ever been puzzled by the results from a Google search? Found yourself wondering how Google connected those results to the words you typed, especially if you didn’t get exactly what you were expecting …
Search Engines
Google Will Soon Explain How It Found Search Results
Reuters reports that Google will soon show its search engine users more information about why it found the results they are shown. Users will be able to click into details such as how their result …
Google Research Sites & Tools
Here’s a list of some of the many research sites and tools available from Google: Google Advanced – https://www.google.com/advanced_search Google Alerts – https://www.google.com/alerts Google Books – https://books.google.com Google Finance – https://www.google.com/finance Google Flights – https://www.google.com/flights/ …
Google Enhances Podcast Discovery
Last week, Google enhanced discoverability of podcast content. Simply add the word “podcast” to your search and Google search will show you playable episodes alongside your other search results. We’ll surface these episodes based on Google’s …
It's Not Science Fiction, It's a New Way to Search
Here in law library-land, we’re all familiar with the concept of “citation chasing”- i.e., finding one good on-point article and then mining its citations, footnotes, and citing sources for other relevant articles. But what if …
A small but critical change on Congress.gov
Congress.Gov announced yesterday that with their new version of searching, users will now get slightly different results. The reason? The default operator is now AND and not OR. So, as Congress.Gov’s post points out, …
CourtListener Frees the Law
The following blog post was written by Eric Taylor, Evening Reference Librarian at the University of Wisconsin Law School Library CourtListener is a powerful new free legal research website sponsored by the non-profit Free Law …
WI Historical Society Preserves Text from Scrubbed DNR & other Government Websites
Last month the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that “the state Department of Natural Resources recently scrubbed language from an agency web page on the Great Lakes that said humans and greenhouse gases are the main …
Google Images – Search by Image and Usage Rights
Google Images is a great tool for finding useful photos and graphics on the web. Did you know that instead of searching for images by keywords, you can search by an image to find similar …
Slim Down Bloated Links from Google Search Results
Ever tried to copy a link from Google search results and ended up something messy looking like this: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CEwQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.makeuseof.com%2F&ei=wSArUPj0E5Gu8QSd1IGYDg&usg=AFQjCNET_hI9VptfwU-R4oSaJjjI-f0jgA&cad=rja The messiness is because Google changes the URL to help them track who is clicking on …